Mention of the Milky Way conjures up images of Summer nights, at which time the great billowy starclouds of our home Galaxy provide an awesome sight as they pass through the rich constellations of Cygnus, Aquila, Scutum, Scorpius and, especially, Sagittarius which lies in the direction of the Galaxy’s center. But there is a Winter …

December brings skywatchers one of the year’s two richest displays of “shooting stars” — the Geminids. (No, the other isn’t the famed Perseids in August, as told below!). They’re named for the constellation Gemini from which they appear to radiate or “shoot” across the sky. And unlike most other meteor displays whose host constellations typically …

Stargazers have complained much over the past month or so about the absence of bright observable planets in the evening sky. Jupiter is setting in the twilight glow after sunset, its banded disk and four bright satellites now largely lost in atmospheric turbulence. And Mars doesn’t rise until late evening, still appearing fairly small in …

The annual Orionid Meteor Shower will provide another fine display of celestial fireworks for skywatchers during the early morning hours of October 21st. The window of opportunity for having a dark sky in which to see these “shooting stars” occurs soon after the 9-day-old Moon goes down around 1:30 a.m. EDT and before the Sun …

A pair of spectacular encounters of our Moon with the bright naked-eye Pleiades Star Cluster (more popularly known as the “Seven Sisters”) occurs this month and repeats again next month (which is being covered here, as the circumstances for observing both events are very similar — and since the October installment will be highlighting the …

This year’s second total eclipse of the Moon occurs on August 28th, giving many observers clouded out for the March event another chance to see one of nature’s grandest spectacles. This time, however, moongazers will have to be either early risers — or stay up quite late — all depending on your time zone. And …

After drawing ever-closer to each other in the evening sky over the past couple of months, the radiant planet Venus and the ringed planet Saturn finally meet in a stunning conjunction as July opens. Their cosmic embrace offers a visual feast for observers not to be missed — whether using the unaided eye, binoculars or …

Greatest elongations of the two inner planets Mercury and Venus are the points in their orbits where they appear at their maximum angular separations from the Sun — either to the east of it when in the evening sky or to the west of it in the morning sky. June offers a superb opportunity to …

Conjunctions are close approaches in the sky of the brighter planets, both with one another and also with the Moon. May offers an opportunity to see our lovely satellite successively brush by Mercury, Venus and Saturn in its perpetual orbital motion eastward across the heavens. And as a bonus, in the case of the first …

An asterism is a distinctive pattern of stars lying within a constellation — or, in some cases, one made up of stars from two or more adjoining constellations. Undoubtedly the best-known and most easily recognized of all such grouping is the Big Dipper in the constellation of Ursa Major. Contrary to popular belief, the Big …

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